Women of substance! She was special and she what really mattered!

MAJOR KULBIR SINGH. Dated: 1/15/2018 8:53:48 AM

Major Kulbir Singh
Jammu, Jan 14
When you read about great people a story suddenly strikes you and this one did since in my fifties I heard about her a lot and thus decided to dedicate my front page column to her. She was one lady who fought for the empowerment of the tribals. Wonder hwo many ladies do for that today! Think about it!
Mahasweta Devi (14 January 1926 – 28 July 2016) was a Bengali fiction writer and social activist. Her notable literary works include Hajar Churashir Maa, Rudali, and Aranyer Adhikar. She worked for the rights and empowerment of the tribal people (Lodha and Shabar) of West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states of India. She was honoured with various literary awards such as the Sahitya Akademi Award (in Bengali), Jnanpith Award and Ramon Magsaysay Award along with India's civilian awards Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan.
Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in Decca, British India (now Dhaka, Bangladesh) to literary parents. Her father, Manish Ghatak, was a well-known poet and novelist of the Kallol movement, who used the pseudonym Jubanashwa. Ghatak's brother was noted filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak. Devi's mother, Dharitri Devi, was also a writer and a social worker whose brothers were very distinguished in various fields, such as the noted sculptor Sankha Chaudhury and the founder-editor of Economic and Political Weekly of India, Sachin Chaudhury. Mahasweta Devi's first schooling was in Dhaka, Eden Montessori school (1930) but after the partition of India she moved to West Bengal in India. Then she studied in Midnapur Mission School Girls High School(1935). After that she was admitted to Santiniketan (1936 to 1938.) After that, she studied at Beltala Girls' School (1939-1941) where she got her matric. Then in 1944 she got I.A. from Asutosh College. Then she joined the Rabindranath Tagore-founded Visva-Bharati University and completed a B.A. (Hons) in English, and then finished an M.A. in English at Calcutta University.
Postcolonial scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has translated Devi's short stories into English and published three books Imaginary Maps (1995, Routledge), Old Woman (1997, Seagull), The Breast Stories (1997, Seagull).
Mahasweta Devi raised her voice several times against the discrimination suffered by tribal people in India. In June 2016, consequent to Devi's activism, the Jharkhand State Government saw to the removal of the chains binding the notable young tribal leader Birsa Munda which had formed part of the sculpture due to its having been based upon a photograph from the days of British rule. Devi's 1977 novel Aranyer Adhikar was about the life of Munda.

 

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